Half of richest households are in southern band of England

Half of the wealthiest households in Britain are in the south and east of
England, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics
(ONS), while just one in fifteen homes in Scotland are among the wealthiest
in the country.

According to the ONS, 49.6 per cent of British households with wealth of over £967,000 – the richest 10 per cent in the country – are located in London, the south-east, the south-west or East Anglia.

Conversely, just 15 per cent of the top 10 per cent wealthiest households are located in the north-east or the north-west, while 6.9 per cent are located in Scotland.

&lt;noframes&gt;Interactive chart: Percentage of households with total wealth &gt; £967,000&lt;/noframes&gt;

According to the ONS, for a household to belong to the richest tenth of homes it needs to have total assets greater than £967,000. This comprises property wealth, pension wealth, savings and other physical assets such as cars, furniture and jewelry.

To be in the bottom tenth of homes in the country, a household’s wealth has to be less than £13,000.

Experts said that the figures show the stark scale of inequality in Britain.

A spokesperson for Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the anti poverty organisation, said: “This research shows the true scale of the inequalities in our country. Not only do people on low incomes possess the least, their ability to earn more and build for the future is diminished by low pay, dead end jobs and overbearing costs.

"It is increasingly difficult to put money away when the day-to-day cost of essentials and making ends meet is such a struggle for millions of working families.”

According to the ONS, the top tenth of wealthy households having four times more money than the bottom 50 per cent.

“The wealth held by the richest 10 per cent of households represented a 43.8 per cent share of aggregate total wealth. In contrast, the combined wealth of the bottom half of households accounted for 9.9 per cent of aggregate total wealth,” the ONS said.

The ONS said that that the research is "the first in a series of short stories looking at the wealth of different groups in society".

Its figures showed that - in total - the richest 10 per cent of households in Britain have 850 times more wealth than the poorest 10 per cent.

While the net wealth held by people in the richest 10 per cent of households is £4.5 trillion, this falls to £5.2 billion for the lowest 10 per cent.

The ONS's findings showed that private pensions account for the vast majority of assets held by the wealthiest people.